Nexus - 0220 - New Times Magazine-pages

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What happens when you suddenly start to remember that you were a high-level hitman during your periods of ‘missing time’? ulia Long and two Marine Special Operations technicians stood in the centre of room 352 at the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Calcutta, while obsequious hotel execttive Ribnu Chattergee waited anxiously for approval. The room had been redesigned exactly to the new specification and Chattergee was eager to leave. The Yanks paid well but they were an odd bunch. The woman in particular made Chattergee's skin crawl. As if reading his thoughts, Julia turned on her heel and faced him: "You may go. -Tell reception that rooms 350 and 354 are also reserved for our use. No one is to enter them without my personal approval.” As Chattergee scuttled gratefully through the door, Julia Long tumed to the senior Marine technician: "Okay, Hank, unpack the gear and let's get started. The first ELF gen- erator goes in the air conditioning duct to the left of the bed, and the second inside the wooden cabinct to the right. Then parasite-wire both to the hotel mains power and we'll calibrate to make sure we can entrain Otto's brain while he's lying in bed or sitting watch- ing TV. We already have direct control of his television video input connector from room 350. Come on, hurry it up.” Hank looked up from the padded aluminium case he was carefully unpacking on the floor: "Yes Ma'am. How much time do we have before Otto gets back from the drilling rig site?" “Don't worry about him, Hank. That man has so much work to do I doubt we'll see him back here for two days at least. Gerald Smith from New Orleans has sabotaged the fluid system but Otto won't know what the hell is happening until it's too late to do anything about it. The drilling rig will disintegrate when the underground pressures get out of con- trol. Langley wants that to happen real fast. God knows how much oil and gas is down there, but Langley doesn't want the Russians or Indian Commies to reach 20,000 feet at all. If they can't reach the oil and gas, the Russians and Indians won't challenge US supremacy in the Bay of Bengal. Remember Libya gentlemen, remember Libya! Look what happened there when Qadhafi found all that oil after he took control in 1969, Now the Arab sonofabitch thinks he can ignore US orders... We won't make the same mistake twice." Julia leaned down and picked up the first of the two small but powerful extra-low-fre- quency generators. Both had been disguised as normal electrical junction boxes that would attract no special attention if they were discovered by mistake. Holding one in her left hand, Julia Long walked towards the bed... Thousands of stars twinkled brightly in the jet-black night sky as Otto's ancient Austin limousine bounced along a rutted dirt track thirty miles to the south-east of Calcutta. The tusty springs groaned with agony as the Austin negotiated a sharp corner, before turning onto a raised gravel causeway that ran as straight as an arrow across the shadowed rice paddies. Far away in the distance Outo could see a tiny tree of lights that grew larger as his geri- atric limousine bounced in and out of the potholes. Slowly but surely the tree took shape until the stark outline of a huge drilling derrick was painted against the backdrop of the night sky. Reaching up to a height of more than one hundred and fifty feet, it looked exactly what it was: the most powerful land drilling rig on the subcontinent, capable of soaking up the thousands of horsepower needed to drill more than four miles straight down into the bowels of the Earth. Owned by the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Commission, the rig had already drilled to 12,400 feet, and it was Otto's job to switch over from the simple Indian drilling fluid to the imported high-performance American system designed to handle the tough drilling and extreme underground pressures expected between 13,000 and 20,000 feet: a task the © Joe Vialls, 1994 45 Merlin Drive, Carine, WA 6020, Australia. Phone: (09) 246 2029. Taken from the full-length book manuscript, ‘Mike-Alpha-Delta-3'. All rights reserved. Though written as fiction, 'Mike- Alpha-Delta-3 'is based on fact. JUNE - JULY 1994 42eNEXUS